


i'll crawl home to her

by gingersprite



Series: stronger for having been broken [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (it doesn't take), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Epic Battles, F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 15:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20695670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingersprite/pseuds/gingersprite
Summary: They should have died many times over, but they didn’t: instead, they flew.She had to believe they could defy fate once again.





	i'll crawl home to her

**Author's Note:**

> Theonsa week day 7, prompt: return + death
> 
> I have no idea how to write battles or military strategy, but D&D don't know how to write anything, so fuck if I'm gonna let that stop me.

Sansa didn’t kiss him before they parted, though she very much wanted to; and if she read the look in Theon’s eyes correct, he wanted the same. It would have felt too final, an acceptance of their fates. They should have died many times over, but hadn’t; not when she escaped King’s Landing, or when he laid in chains in the dungeons of the Dreadfort. Not when they were at the mercy of Ramsay, or when he took her hand and they jumped from Winterfell’s ramparts.

They should have died, but they didn’t: they flew. She had to believe they could defy fate once again.

So she didn’t kiss him, and he didn’t try to kiss her; instead they merely held each other, and waited for the dreaded hour of their parting.

“Come back to me.” Sansa said; was it a plea, a prayer, a command? Even she couldn’t say.

“I will, my lady,” Theon swore. “I’ll come back to you.”

\---

The scream she made when she learned he’d broken his promise could only be rivaled by the dragons’ roars.

\---

They’d planned to burn the bodies of the dead, but Sansa wouldn’t let a single Ironborn be put on the pyre, insisting that all of them be committed to the sea in keeping with their faith. But the sea was a long way away, and they didn’t have the men or resources to devote to such a journey; so they gave the bodies to the White Knife, and had to trust that they’d be carried down to the Bite, and out into the Narrow Sea. Surely their spirits would answer the call of salt and iron.

Sansa refused to let anyone touch his body, and cleaned and dressed him on her own. She sat vigil alone, her tears blotting the Greyjoy banner she’d wrapped him in. When it came time, Sansa pinned her emblem to his front, pressed a kiss to his cold cheek, and sent him off to meet his god.

As she watched his body swept away with the current, she felt the scabbed-over lacerations on her wounded heart tear open anew. Though her world crumbled around her, she wouldn’t let anyone see her cry.

_Steel,_ she told herself. _My skin is steel._

\---

None of them were safe, so long as Cersei Lannister had the Golden Company and the Iron Fleet at her command; she would eradicate them all, if that’s what it took for her to keep her crown. It was decided, after far too little rest, that they would pit all of their remaining forces against hers; including the Northmen.

“We owe it to Daenerys, after all she’s sacrificed for us.” Jon said, ignoring his sisters’ protests.

“We owe her _nothing,_” Sansa hissed. “It was _Bran_ who set the trap, and it was _Arya_ who killed the Night King, and it was The-” she gasped, choking from the pain of his name lodged in her throat. “It was Theon who bought her the time needed.”

“Daenerys is our queen,” insisted Jon, though the weariness that lay across his shoulders said otherwise. “She helped us fight the wights, so now we’ll help her take the throne.”

He turned and left them, refusing to hear any more.

“He’d have us send Stark men under the command of a Targaryen, under rested and ill prepared for what lies ahead!” Sansa fumed. She paced the length of the hearth, fire behind her blue eyes. Arya looked too drained from the battle to match her sister’s rage, while Bran stared glassy eyed into the gleaming coals.

“They will not be commanded by a Targaryen,” he intoned, stopping Sansa mid-pace. “It must be one of Ned Stark’s blood.”

“I think Jon’s already made it clear where his allegiances lie.” Sansa scoffed.

“Not Jon. You.”

Both she and Arya gaped at him. “Me?”

“You’re Ned Stark’s eldest.”

“His eldest _daughter,_” she amended. “You’re his heir, now.”

Bran shook his head, a hint of something sad peeking through his hardened shell. “The other lords barely think I’m human, and- and I’m not sure they’re wrong. No, it has to be you.”

“Have you forgotten how people still speak of me?” Sansa demanded. “They call me Lady Lannister, or Bolton.”

Little Lyanna Mormont had done so once, taunting her with a ferocity that belied her size. She was dead now, at only fourteen years old; her ribcage crushed in a turned giant’s fist, like a butterfly’s wings.

“Whatever they call you now will disappear when they see you riding beneath a Stark banner, with your red hair flying. You are the blood of Winterfell; and when they see you, they’ll remember what they’re fighting for.” Bran’s voice held more life in it at that moment than it had in years.

“I don’t want armies dying for me!” she protested “It’s the North they’re supposed to be fighting for, not House Stark.”

“To many, they are one and the same.”

\---

Though she had seen battles firsthand, Sansa was not a military commander, seasoned by years of study and training.

She stared at the faces of her men, the men she was sending off to die. Though it was Jon who made the choice, she would be the one to lead them. Did they not see her for what she was, a girl of only twenty years?

That did not matter, though, for it was just as Bran had said. When the Northmen saw her astride a white stallion, sunlight glinting off the armor Gendry had her clad in, her undone tresses streaming out behind her; something came alive in them. They would fight to their last breaths with a devotion they denied Daenerys, and even Jon.

It was exhilarating. It was terrifying.

She looked back at her commanders, feeling utterly lost. They wanted her to speak to the troops, but what the hells was she supposed to say? Lord Royce gave her an encouraging nod.

“I am steel,” Sansa whispered to herself. “My skin has turned to steel. Let them see what a Stark is made of.”

With a deep breath to steady her shaking hands, she urged her horse forwards down the line.

“Men of the North!” she shouted with a strength she did not feel; her voice cracked under the strain, but she did not back down.

“I, the daughter of Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn, come to you now on the eve of this battle to remind you of why we fight. We will not let a Southern queen mistreat us, betray oaths, or violate guest rights any longer. 

“Let tyrants fear! You may think I am a weak and feeble woman, but the blood of the First Men runs through my veins, as it runs through yours. It is the blood of Winterfell; and winter has come for Cersei Lannister!”

Her fist held high, she turned to look at her army. They met her with silence; then an explosion of cheers.

\---

As the battle on land raged around her, Sansa watched the battle at sea between Yara Greyjoy’s forces and her uncle’s. Daenerys and Jon had done a decent job of decimating the Iron Fleet from dragon back, until a furious wail broke through all other sounds. The dragons reared back and seemed to recover, only to begin twisting and bucking their riders. Horror rose in Sansa’s gut as she watched the beasts writhe in midair.

Their worst fears had been confirmed. Euron Greyjoy had indeed found the dragonhorn, gleaming black and red, wrapped in bands of Valyrian steel; with it, he had the power to turn the dragons against their mother. They would all burn.

Through a spyglass, she could see the foul man perched at the bow of his ship where the dragonhorn was mounted, his lips only leaving the horn to cackle at his imminent victory. The sun flashed off of something behind him, and he tumbled out of lens view; by the time Sansa adjusted the glass, Euron was locked in battle with Yara, an axe in each of her hands. The dragonhorn was nowhere to be found.

Daenerys seemed to have regained some control over her mount, the massive beast she called Drogon; but the smaller one, Rhaegal, fought Jon’s attempts to bring it underway, shooting a burst of fire at its fellow. Drogon let out a blast of its own, the fire blazing indiscriminately down on both fleets. Whether or not Daenerys brought Drogon to heel, Jon clearly couldn’t hope to stop Rhaegal’s rampage, the dragon still bound to obey Euron’s commands.

Sansa felt someone grab her arm and try to drag her away from her post, perhaps in some attempt to get her to safety, but she would not be moved; nowhere was safe anymore. She would face her fate head-on, like Theon had.

\---

While the fight continued above, the water of Blackwater Bay began to roil, like a pot over an open flame. Sailors fell to their knees as the deck below them shook and buckled; waves drove ships to crash into each other as something deep beneath them raced to the surface.

It broke through the water with a force like a cannon, a massive sound coming from the waves sent crashing out around it. When that sound started to fade, something else grew louder; the wail of the dragonhorn, but this time it seemed to come from underwater, the thunderous sound rippling out.

Hundreds of tentacles whipped about, snapping through ships’ masts like twigs. The spyglass nearly slipped from her slack fingers, as Sansa had to crane her head back to see the beast in full. It was a kraken, skin ghostly white and almost translucent from centuries spent at the bottom of the ocean. On its back, just in front of the flared crest sat a figure, the dragonhorn at his lips.

Some part of Sansa knew even before she could focus the spyglass in on the mysterious figure; she felt it deep in her bones, with her bruised and battered heart, between the atoms of her steel-turned skin.

_Theon._

He blew the horn again, and the dreadful noise sounded to Sansa as beautiful as the sweetest love song she’d ever heard. The dragons broke away from each other, their heads turned listlessly to this newcomer. Every sailor and soldier, Ironborn, Northman, Southron, Dothraki, Unsullied: they all stopped and stared in the direction of the kraken and its rider.

The trance held for five, four, three, two… and the dragons screeched and dove at Euron’s ship. A single tentacle grabbed Yara and pulled her to safety, just before the _Silence_ exploded in a ball of Dragonfire.

\---

The moment the spots faded from her eyes, Sansa raced to her horse, unable to hear even the hefty clank of her own armor over the roaring in her ears. She spurred the horse on ahead, directly towards where her guards were screaming for her not to go.

Her horse skidded on the sandy ground of the shore, but she urged it on anyways. The water called to her, like the horn had called to the dragons. She made a harried dismount and stumbled forward, as the kraken drew as close to the shore as its massive body would allow. Two tentacles deposited its charges with far greater care than might have been expected, a single filmy eye watching them intently.

Theon stared at her, covered in sweat and grime with her hair whipping in the wind, with unadulterated awe in his eyes, like he didn’t hold the key to absolute power in his hands. His hands, which were whole and unblemished, Sansa noticed in a somewhat dispassionate way. As she drew closer she noticed that the hollows under his eyes- permanent remnants of starvation- had disappeared, and his skin, though wet, glowed with health.

None of that mattered; he could have come back deaf and blind and limbless, for all she cared.

They met and stopped, a hands length apart; he smiled at her almost bashfully.

“You, I-I- I saw-” Sansa stammered helplessly. “I saw- you were dead. I buried you. H-how…?”

“I said I’d come back to you,” he rasped. “I promised.”

The dragonhorn tumbled to the ground as she flung her arms around him and pulled him into a deep kiss, one which he eagerly returned. Because he was _here_; he’d come back to her, in defiance of every natural law she knew to be true. 

There would be time for so much more later, a whole lifetime’s worth of kisses; but none felt quite as sweet as this one did, on the banks of the Blackwater, the air heady with salt and smoke, and the promise of something more.

**Author's Note:**

> Sansa's speech is heavily inspired by Queen Elizabeth I's speech to her troops at Tilbury before their battle with the Spanish Armada. You can read about it more [here](https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/queen-elizabeth-i-speech-troops-tilbury).
> 
> Title from "Work Song" by Hozier, because it's kind of astounding I haven't used anything of his yet.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Rising Again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20698097) by [qodarkness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qodarkness/pseuds/qodarkness)
  * [The Drowned God’s Justice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20710106) by [qodarkness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qodarkness/pseuds/qodarkness)
  * [The Drowned God’s Choosing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20803124) by [qodarkness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qodarkness/pseuds/qodarkness)


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